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Uranus is the third-largest and fourth most massive planet in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun at a distance of about 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) and completes one orbit every 84 years. The length of a day on Uranus as measured by Voyager 2 is 17 hours and 14 minutes. Uranus is distinguished by the fact that it is tipped on ...
The largest is located twice as far from Uranus as the previously known rings. These new rings are so far from Uranus that they are called the "outer" ring system. Hubble also spotted two small satellites, one of which, Mab, shares its orbit with the outermost newly discovered ring. The new rings bring the total number of Uranian rings to 13. [162]
Around 200 BCE Eratosthenes determines that the radius of the Earth is roughly 6,400 km. [43] Circa 150 BCE Hipparchus uses parallax to determine that the distance to the Moon is roughly 380,000 km. [44] The work of Hipparchus about the Earth-Moon system was so accurate that he could forecast solar and lunar eclipses for the next six centuries.
A solar wind event squashed the protective bubble around Uranus just before Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1986, shifting how astronomers understood the mysterious world.
Scientists have published two studies on the historic cache of lunar soil samples from the moon’s far side that China’s Chang’e-6 mission brought back to Earth in June.
Uranus, blue-green in color due to the methane contained in an atmosphere comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium, has a diameter of about 31,500 miles (50,700 km). It is big enough to fit 63 ...
380 Earth radii (very inaccurate, true=16000 Earth radii) Aristarchus of Samos made a measurement of the distance of the Sun from the Earth in relation to the distance of the Moon from the Earth. The distance to the Moon was described in Earth radii (20, also inaccurate). The diameter of the Earth had been calculated previously.
How did Uranus get its name? English astronomer William Herschel discovered the ice giant in 1781 and tried unsuccessfully to name it after King George III, according to NASA.